Five Ways Neil and Eva Never Said Goodbye
by Fjallsarlon
Summary: Five ways Neil and Eva never said goodbye. Includes speculation about what exactly Neil's machine is intended to do.
1. Chapter 1

**Five Ways Neil and Eva Never Said Goodbye**

Summary: Five ways that Neil and Eva never said goodbye.

* * *

1\. The Kick

"So that's it, then," Eva says, dully. "End of the road."

Neil has drawn up next to her, is studying the drop from the ragged lip of the cliff with interest.

"Thought you were afraid of heights."

"Don't remind me," Neil grits out, and now she notices the trembling of his hands.

He looks over at her. "Well then," he says, casually. "Guess this is it. Nice knowing you, Eva. See you on the other side. Hopefully not too soon."

"Goddammit, Neil!"

She's shouting. Why is she shouting?

"Is this a game to you? This is the rest of your life! These are your memories, you fucking idiot! And they're all collapsing around us!"

"Eva," Neil says. Still so calm. A part of Eva figures that if anyone ever pulls up her session logs afterwards, they'll think she has a vegetable obsession, courtesy of the profanity filter.

She's gripping his bony shoulders, shaking him. She can't make herself stop. "You know the stakes, Neil. So why aren't you worried!"

"Eva," Neil says, again. This time, he pries her hands off with an unaccustomed gentleness. "You're right."

She just stares at him. "You're not Neil, are you? Because otherwise, I just heard Neil stubborn-as-a-rock Watts admit I'm right."

"I'm Neil," Neil said. "As Neil as he ever was." He smirked at her expression. "A guy's got to have some secrets, y'know. But anyway, you're right. It's the rest of my—make that _our_ —life. So why're you angry, Eva?"

"Because I hate failing a patient," Eva grinds out. "Even you. You know that."

"Oh, trust me," Neil murmurs. "You didn't fail here. Not by a long shot."

"Really?" Eva demands, hotly. "Because while we were going on a long road trip through your memories, Neil, you're busy dying! And we're nowhere near to having your wish granted."

"Heh," Neil smirks. "So figure this, Sherlock. Why'd I give you an impossible wish, then?"

"Because you're a pain in the ass, that's why."

"Touchè." He sighs. "Well then. This is it. So long and thanks for all the fish, Eva."

She realises what he's going to do a second before he does it. "Neil, don't you fucking dare—"

ERROR, she reads then, printed in bright aqua letters on the display of her helmet.

She can still hear his parting words. _What if we've already fulfilled my wish? It was a great road trip, Eva. Now get out there and be awesome, you hear? Doctor's orders._

Eva jerks up her helmet. "Roxie, I need you to—"

Roxie merely comes over and pulls her into a tight hug. "I'm sorry, Eva," Roxie says, quietly. "It's over."

The patient monitor sitting on the desk shows only a flat line.

* * *

2\. Almost Human

"You know," Neil says, almost-casually. "Of all possible reactions, I really didn't expect this one. I guess I should've seen it coming though."

Eva tried to reset the memory. Once. Twice.

"Neil, you need to give me back control of the admin functions," she says, as sternly as she can.

He spreads his hands out in a hapless shrug. "I'm not stopping you," he says, quietly. "That's what I've been trying to tell you."

The owl outside is hooting again, same as it had when she looped back and reset the memory. Goddammit, Eva thinks. It can't be. It _can't_ be.

Neil studies her, grey eyes impossibly smug, through the lenses of his spectacles. "Lemme guess," he continues. "I can see the cogs whirring in there. You're resetting the memory. You're not resetting me."

"You're just an algorithm," Eva protests. "Just a working copy of Neil." Her throat all but closes on her, at that last sentence.

Impossibly real.

"Eva," Neil says, kindly. "If you're referring to the very crude fact that I'm a process being partly-instantiated by my own brain and by the modified equipment, then the answer is, yes, from a certain point of view, I'm 'just an algorithm.' But if you stop panicking, and search your feelings, you'll know I'm as much Neil as I ever was."

"Search your feelings?" Eva asks, in spite of herself. "What is this, Star Wars?"

"Close enough, young Padawan," Neil replies. "What, not gonna run me through a gauntlet of questions? About what I really did on our graduation day, or what happened at the SigCorp interview? Or even about that time I lied about staying home and drinking Scotch during Colin's funeral, when I was really working on this?" He gestures at their surroundings, but Eva knows he's really referring to his highly-modified version of SigCorp's equipment.

He's baiting her. They both know it.

"I don't think so," Eva replies, coolly. "If you're a working copy of Neil, you'd know the answers to those questions. And if you don't know these answers…"

"Then I can't really be Neil, can I?" he finishes, nodding. "Catch-22, Eva. So what's it gonna be?"

"Algorithms seem real," Eva confirms. "They always do. None of the algorithms were ever conscious of being an algorithm."

"But they were limited," Neil argues. "They could be reset. They had memories confined to the bounds of the relevant memory. Ten algorithms have ten different parameters. They're not continuous beyond the relevant memory."

"You remembered that lecture."

"Of course I did," Neil says, coolly. "It was what led me down…" he stops, there. "Let's just say it was something that drove me a great deal, once we were done with the Institute."

"And the Neil out there?" Eva wants to know.

"Still dying," Neil says. "Still me. C'mon, Eva. You watch Doctor Who. This has got to be a lot easier to swallow. Same packaging, same software."

"I don't know," Eva says. Everything about their training is screaming at her, telling her this is impossible, this is foolish, she needs to carry on with the mission, their patient— _Neil_ —is depending on her, and where the hell's Roxie anyway?

He reads it off her, of course. "It's impossible, isn't it?" he asks, gravely. A faint smile, a quirk at the corners of his mouth. "Thing is, Eva, if you work hard enough, if you're motivated enough…let's just say impossible is nothing. It helps if you're brilliant and talented, of course."

She hesitates.

"You once told me the problem with me was that I was afraid to take risks," he says, his voice soft. "I still remember. It was when we were working on Johnny Wyles, and you were right. I didn't dare. I liked to play it safe, to have my risks catalogued and managed."

She remembers, of course. God, how long has it been?

"This is a leap of faith, Eva," Neil continues. "Don't you think it's time you jumped?"

Eva closes her eyes. "Sorry," she says, merely. She knows where the memento is, what it is, and the memory links are humming with colour and warmth at the back of her mind. She lunges forward and presses her hand to the polished name badge gleaming brightly on his SigCorp coat.

She wonders what she's apologising for, precisely, but completes the puzzle in a matter of seconds and the barriers shatter—scattering shards of memory, like broken glass—and then she is falling through Neil's mind, through layers and layers of memory and desire.

Where to, she doesn't know.

She wishes she didn't feel as though she'd made the wrong decision.

* * *

3\. A Hundred Hundred Heartbeats

"Huh," says Neil. And that's it.

"You're taking this unexpectedly well," Eva says, warily. She's resetting him if she has to, but the urgency of this particular traversal is pressing on her.

"Eh," Neil says. "I'd always expected it to be…" he falters. "To not be a car crash, I suppose."

"Neil," Eva reminds him. "You're _dying_. I'm traversing your memories right now. If there's something you really don't want to let me see, I might end up seeing it anyway. You might as well just tell it to me straight."

He snorts. "Oh, please. I do this for a living too, don't forget."

"…As much as I am often tempted to forget it," Eva mutters. "Fine. So?"

"So, I know that the memories you're hopping through are gonna be ordered in terms of relevance, not in terms of importance or whatever. Meaning you're not gonna see it. Probably."

It isn't really the best moment to feel the urge to freeze the memory and throttle her erstwhile partner.

"Neil."

As if he isn't dying, outside of this memory—as if the thought has summoned it, the memory shudders again, the entire simulated world trembling at its very foundations, and their environs are briefly glazed a warning red.

"Dagnabbit," Neil whispers. He runs a hand through his neat hair. "We're—you're _really_ out of time."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" Eva snaps.

He shakes his head, but now she can't find any trace of smugness at all. "Don't be ridiculous," he says. "Even if I gave you a memento now, you'd never make it far. Not if this is the most recent copy of me, and if the memory is disintegrating now. So, tell it to me straight, Eva. How long do I have?"

She presses her lips together, tightly.

"Please."

She finally relents. "Not long," she admits. "They did their best to save you, but it was one hell of a car crash. The doctor didn't even think this was a good idea."

"So why the hell are you in here?" Neil demands. "Get out of here, _now_. You know as well as I do the risks of trying to take up residence in here." A thought seems to strike him. "How did you even know what my wish was?"

Eva can't meet his ice-grey eyes.

"Oh, God," he chokes, and then Eva realises he's all but bent over, wheezing with laughter. He removes his spectacles, eventually, polishes them against his white lab coat. "I underestimated you. You forged the paperwork. What _were_ you planning to do, even?"

"Fixing some regrets," Eva said.

The world shudders, again. "Eva," someone says, and Eva realises it's Roxie. "You really need to get out of here, _now_."

"Go," Neil says. His glasses are on again, practically gleaming. "I might just have enough time to finish a Scotch, too."

Eva's throat tightens. "Neil…"

Too many words, but she can't seem to find them at all.

"Let me guess. I'm not even conscious up there, am I?"

She shakes her head, mutely.

"Good," Neil says, flatly. "I imagine this would hurt something awful if I was. Well, Dr. Rosalene. It's been an honour."

He pulls her against him, in a tight, brief hug—a friendly one—and when they pull apart, her eyes aren't the only ones blurring.

"Now get the hell out of here, before I kick you out. I'm still the technician, and I can still do awesome things with the equipment if you piss me off. I want some me-time with my Scotch."

It's not the goodbye Eva expects to be saying to an old friend and colleague, but it's the one she ends up with, anyway, as the world crumbles around her and goes dark—now the ordinary, muffling darkness of the helmet.

She doesn't remove it. A hundred emotions are thick in her chest, crushing it, and she might just drown if she has to emerge—reluctantly—from the privacy of grief into the world of light and sound and paperwork.

* * *

4\. Tears In The Rain

The overworld is disintegrating around them; with it, fragments of Neil's memories, some of them glittering shards so sharp Eva could cut herself on them, some of them crumbling into motes of glowing dust.

One shard reflects her younger face, for a moment, wearing a mortarboard, which tells Eva this must be from a memory pertaining to their graduation. Another shows a night sky, with a river of glorious stars running through it, dark trees silhouetted against it.

Laughter—this must be the unforgettable tofu party—from another shard, and then another one where Neil is studying a bottle of pills, his expression inscrutable…

So many memories, falling past her, like gentle rain. So many things she'd never known about, that she likely never _wanted_ to know about. Neil was a private person. She'd always respected that.

Someone catches hold of her, and she jerks to a halt before the world changes, yet again, and now she isn't falling, not anymore.

"This is the unfinished interface," Neil says, briefly. "I guess it'll remain unfinished."

They're not-quite standing in a clear space, gleaming with light. "My god," Eva finds herself saying. "It's like a Windows Vista desktop."

"You did _not_ just say that."

"Uh-huh. So what's with that crappy aesthetic?"

Neil adjusts his glasses. "You're really asking for a Kamehameha to the face right now, Eva. There are some things you just don't insult, like my spotless calibrations, my many _brilliant_ adjustments to the equipment…"

"Is this how you talk to the person trying to do their job and fix your memories?"

"Is this all there is for you, Eva?" Neil asks, his voice soft. "A job?"

"What else do you want me to say?" Eva fires back.

"I don't know." His expression has gone blank; shuttered, even. "Guess I should've known, though, right? I mean, you're always the one telling me not to get attached to the patient, that we have to do our jobs."

"Neil," she says. Thinks she understands, even though it's too late, and she was never very good at these kinds of words anyway, which just means that she and Neil were the best kind of dysfunctional friends.

She takes his hand, instead. Squeezes it lightly. "I don't think there's anything more I can do, now."

"No," he agrees, tiredly. Bitterly, almost. "I guess there isn't." He studies her, and the rough, incomplete interface around them. "I had dreams, you know. Plans, even. And all those things I've seen and done, some of them in people's memories…" he shakes his head, and smiles crookedly. "All those moments lost, like tears in the rain, huh?"

"Okay," Eva says, "You were cool until you got all Blade Runner on me there."

"Sheesh, do you have to ruin a guy's last words here, Eva?" Neil complains. "I wanna go out properly."

Another tremor shakes the world, but Neil's interface seems far more stable than the memory simulations or the overworld, and Eva wants to know why, but this isn't the best time.

"Happy New Year, Eva," Neil says, at last. "You live a good, long life—the best, you hear? Name your smartest, most brilliant kid—or cactus, or dog, or whatever, I'm not picky—after me! And you better take care of my bonsai plant!"

"Cactus, plant, noted," Eva says. "This is it, then?"

He smiles, tiredly. "Yeah. Could be worse, I s'pose. At least I know, now. Thanks for trying, anyway."

"You're not upset?"

"That I'm gonna die? Sheesh, Eva. I've gotten over it already. And I know we don't always succeed, so I knew this was a possibility from the moment you started the traversal process. I'm just glad that, like…" He trails off into silence.

She's not the only one who seems unable to find words now; with words stuck in her throat like fish-bones.

Should she be sorry? Sad? Furious? But if this is sorrow, then it's lodged like a lump of ice in her chest, and it only hurts when she breathes, so she tries very hard not to.

"Okay, this speech was definitely better before you interrupted me," Neil says. "I'm holding you responsible. Now get the hell out of here, before you make me worry, or ruin my mascara."

"You're not even wearing any."

"Point stands," Neil says. "Chop chop, Eva. Clock's ticking."

She looks at him, one last time—bright-eyed, worn, cheeks hollow, but still the Neil Watts she's known for a long time, practically grown up with, and for a moment, she seems to see everything, the myriad of memories they'd shared, that she'd seen when his overworld disintegrated.

It's as if it's the sum of Neil's life, weighed and tallied, and strangely heavy against her heart.

"Goodbye," Eva whispers, and falls for the last time.

* * *

5\. All That Is Left Unsaid

The world flashes an angry red as the ground shudders beneath her feet. Eva _is_ rushing, as fast as she dares, bouncing from memory to memory, but still she just isn't _fast_ enough, and part of her refuses to admit defeat, to call it a day and just give up, especially when it's Neil who's her patient, Neil who depends on her skill.

"Hey," says that amazingly persistent algorithm. He's got Neil's crooked smile down just right, and Eva feels a little crack running through her heart, just right there. "Ready to stop fighting me, Eva?"

Maybe she is. But she can't—won't—call this particular traversal, and so she stares warily at him instead.

"C'mon," he says. "Think about it this way. You can't race the clock. We both know there isn't enough time for you to hit the memory you need to, not if I'm going critical right now."

She hesitates.

"Trust me," he says, and something in Eva cracks, in that moment. Too many memories, she supposes. Too many reminders.

"Fine," she manages. Wishes the words didn't taste so much like ash, like defeat. She takes his hand, and he opens—showy as always—a rift in the memory and they tumble through it and out, onto soft grass.

Eva blinks. "Where are we?"

"Technically," Not-Quite-Neil says, "It's the interface. I spent a lot of time working on it, and finally finished it. Practically-speaking, though, it's where I went star-gazing with my grandfather, back when I was a kid."

"Then, why…?"

That crooked smile, again. "I dunno," he admits, with an artless shrug. He sprawls on the grass. Above them, the night sky is glorious, filled with a thousand glistening stars, like glass, and the Milky Way like a river of stardust. "I guess I just figured that if I had to go, I wanted…" his voices trails off.

"I guess," Eva admits. "This is pretty nice."

But there's no sign of his younger self, or his grandfather here, and in any case, she never made it to those memories.

"Lemme guess," Neil says, and he's looking at her. "You're wondering what happened to my grandfather or any younger memories of me. I told you: this is the interface. It's not a memory. It's just…oh, I guess you could call it a construct. But I built it out of a place I remembered."

"Did you ever go back?"

"Twice," Neil replies. "Once after my grandfather died, and it hurt so much. The second time was when I learned I was gonna die. I was pretty angry, then."

"You hid it. So well." Too well, Eva thinks.

"Yeah. I know."

It's getting harder to tell herself he's just a memory, when every part of her, her instincts, is all screaming at her that this is Neil.

"So, this is it, then," she says, bone-tired. "I failed. No thanks to you."

"Did you think," Neil says, gently—and this is not something she is quite used to, hearing this from him—"Did you maybe think, Eva, that this was really what I wanted? I mean, what kind of wish is 'make me wear my blue sneakers and not my red ones to stargazing night' supposed to be, anyway?"

"I thought you were just being a pain," Eva admits. But she'd taken the job anyway because it was Neil, and being a pain was just his nature, and it was _Neil_ and if she had to walk over coals and broken glass to make his final wish come true, she would have.

Neil purses his lips. "Well," he says, at last. "I suppose it was a _bit_ much. It was meant to lead you on a bit of a wild goose-chase, but this would really have been a lot easier if you'd just worked with me here, rather than against me."

Except suddenly she remembers, and Eva leaps to her feet in a panic. "Shit," she curses. "You're dying, I have to get out of here right now!"

"Wait!" Neil exclaims. "Notice Roxie isn't panicking?"

Eva pauses. "What?"

He's talking quickly, now. "We modified this machine, remember? We didn't do everything we'd planned to—well, that I'd planned to. But the interface is stable, and we installed so many buffers that this place is practically impregnable. You won't feel a thing when I pass."

"You're asking me to take a chance on my health, you know."

"Yes. I'm asking you to take a chance on me and Roxie. Please?"

"Why?" Eva demands.

He hesitates.

She's almost at the point of dropping free, when he looks her in the eye, and his eyes are as grey as the sea before a storm when he says, quietly, "Because I'm dying, Eva. We both know this. I'm not conscious up there. And what I really want, is…" he stops, for a moment. Struggles to say this. "I mean, I really, really don't wanna be alone."

For a moment, she sees it—raw vulnerability, etched on those familiar features.

The crack inside Eva twists, widens. She doesn't know what it's called. Maybe it's not a crack, really, but a fishhook, lodged in her heart. Maybe it's called guilt, or friendship.

Maybe it's called something else, something she doesn't quite have the words for.

She flops back down onto the grass.

"It's a beautiful night," she comments, casually.

"Yeah. It is." Neil sits back down, himself. "Wish I'd come down here more, really, but then life…" he waves a hand vaguely. "Kind of got in the way."

"It sure does."

"Eva?"

"Mm?"

"Thanks."

"What for?"

"…For everything."

She closes her eyes, for a moment. Somewhere in the dark, he reaches out—awkwardly, as if expecting her to pull away—and takes her hand. She allows the gesture.

"You're welcome," Eva says, heavily.

Somewhere up there, he's dying, after all.

They sit in companionable silence after that—because there aren't enough words, and really, Eva doesn't want to struggle when the boundaries between them have never been very well-defined. Instead, they sit beneath a sky full of stars, fingers interlaced, waiting for the end of these things to come.

It will have to be enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Five Ways Neil and Eva Never Said Goodbye**

Summary: Five ways that Neil and Eva never said goodbye.

* * *

1\. The Drowned and the Saved

She's not Eva. Neil knows that, _knows_ that, but it's hard to tell himself that, when the guilt rises, and it feels like he's drowning beneath fifty metric tonnes of seawater, and he can't breathe.

The pain, by now, is an old friend—stabbing through his skull like a corona of barbed wire, overlaying the entire simulated reality in a tracery of red. It isn't quite real, and it is; welcome to simulation sickness, where his body is screaming that it's in pain, but the pain isn't real, it's all in his head, in more ways than one.

"Talk to me, Neil," Eva is saying, and he's even gotten that part right: the crease of concern between her eyebrows, that sharp, brittle edge to her voice. "What's with the painkillers? And what's with the…"

Except maybe Eva would never ask, would never have prodded and pried. Neil doesn't know, and the more he _tries_ , the more he's acutely aware that he's painting from the canvas and colours of his memory, and each attempt only further muddies the waters, that it is hope and desire and a certain kind of love, as much as it is reality, and only further distorts who Dr. Eva Rosalene really was.

"You have to let go," the therapist had said, firmly, and Neil'd walked out of the mandated sessions and then started working on his own, illicit version of Sigmund's equipment right after.

He didn't know why, not precisely. He felt, perhaps, a sense of obligation, knowing that it was his fault, knowing that he had been driving that night the car crashed. Knowing that he had somehow been pried out of the smoking wreckage, while Eva had died that same night.

How did you even come to terms with something like that? There was no sense to it at all. It could've just as easily been him—should've been him, really, if there was any sense of justice in the universe at all. It's the meaninglessness of it all that chokes him, that sticks, like memory fish-bones in his throat, like thorns.

Each circuit, each wire, each piece of code was a plank in a wire-and-metal bridge he was building, one that would take him to some form of atonement.

"I'm fine," Neil says, lightly, and he smiles, and it feels odd to, but he needs to sell it, and he's never been all that bad an actor. "Just ate some spicy food that disagreed with me, that's all."

"You?" Eva scoffs. "You _thrive_ on spicy food; you say so at least a dozen times a week." Her voice softens, just a little. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

He stands up, reels, and almost throws up right at Eva's feet, as the room rolls and pitches about him and there's a tight, squeezing pain in his head and for a few seconds, Neil doesn't know where he is, doesn't know which way is up and which way is down.

"Neil. Neil!"

There's that note of outright worry in Eva's voice now, with a hint of panic, and he's almost _never_ heard that, in all their years working together. Yet another slight divergence point.

He fumbles for the painkillers—not _real_ painkillers, but they work just enough to trick his brain into forgetting the simulation sickness, just for a short while. Not like this, Neil thinks. Not like this.

Hands close on his shoulder, and guide him to his swivel-chair, and he all but collapses into it. He doesn't know where the painkillers are, and he has to force himself to breathe past the pain, to somehow keep functioning when all he wants to do is to leave, to curl up in a ball in reality, and not fight the simulation sickness any longer.

"Neil," Eva says, frowning down at him. "Damnit, Neil, you're _not_ alright. What's wrong? You're scaring me."

"Everything," Neil chokes out, but then he stops, because he won't break, _won't_ , and he surely will if he starts blurting it all out to Eva, who just looks extremely taken aback right now.

"I've always thought we were friends, Neil," Eva says, and now her voice has a gentle, coaxing quality, as if she's talking to a frightened animal. "I'm just going to sit here. You can talk to me, if you want to. If you don't, that's fine too. But promise me that if it's a medical problem, you'll seek help for it."

"Yeah," he manages. "Sure."

You have to let go, the therapist had said. But each time Neil tried, and _tried_ , he choked on the guilt, and he could never force himself to say goodbye. And now here he is, crippled by simulation sickness, barely able to hold himself together, with Eva sitting cross-legged on the floor of his office, close enough to touch, and he can't bring himself to say anything at all.

"Eva."

"Hmm?"

"What would you do, if you did something bad? Imagine if," and damn it all, he _isn't_ going to sob, it's just the pain talking, right now, still raw, still fresh, "—if you did something so bad there's no way to make it better."

Eva frowns. "What kind of bad are we talking about here?"

"If you killed someone. Like, if I went out and killed Rob right now." _Like when I killed you._

"…Well, you should probably turn yourself in to the police. You didn't kill someone, did you?"

"I as good as did," he admits. A fitting almost-confession, to the almost-ghost sitting across from him.

Eva exhales; a quiet sigh escaping her lips. "You sure about that? You not being overdramatic again?"

"I'm dead certain, Eva," he says, gazing over at her. "It is…it was my fault." And he has to let go, but he doesn't know if he can ever bring himself to do so; to say goodbye.

Except she isn't Eva. She's only a shadow of the real Eva, the Eva he knew; a painting of fire and grace and starlight, rather than the fire itself. He hasn't captured more than a fraction of her complexity, and her perfections and imperfections, and the more he tries, the more she diverges, until he can't even quite remember what Eva was really like.

And maybe that's what gives him the courage to say, words tumbling from his mouth, set free by this realisation, "Eva. I'm sorry. It was you. It _was you_. You died, and I survived, and I don't know why, I never did," and now they're staring at each other, the drowned and the saved, Eva's mouth gaping in surprise.

"I have to say goodbye," Neil whispers, and for once, his head is clear, despite the pain, and there is just the slightest sense that the load on his shoulders has grown a little lighter. "I can't…I can't keep doing this. I can't keep rebuilding the memories, rebuilding _you_ from scratch. Eva's dead. I dunno if I'll ever really forgive myself. But I have to let you go, somehow."

It's a decaying world, a prison of memories that binds both of them; he's built from layers and layers of memories, assembling them together painstakingly in a composite, and now Neil unravels them bit by bit, strand by careless strand, and it _hurts_ , like breathing saltwater, but slowly, slowly

like air, he begins to rise.

* * *

2\. Begin Again

The problem is, Dr. Eva Rosalene had always been sharp, and Neil knows it.

Perhaps that's why he's not all that surprised when she all but kicks open his office door one lazy afternoon, as he's spinning a ballpoint pen bearing the SigCorp logo, trying to see how many rounds he can get in before the pen drops.

"Neil," Eva says. "We need to talk."

"Oh, and this justifies kicking my door in? I was about to set a new record for pen-spinning, y'know. I had that flow, it was all coming together. Then you startled me and I dropped it." He bends down to scoop up his pen, and stuffs it into his coat pocket.

"I know," Eva says.

"Well, then why'd you even do something like that?"

"This isn't real," Eva says, and her hands are curling and uncurling into fists by her side. "Is it?"

"What," Neil says, flatly. Realises they're having two separate conversations, at the moment. "Eva, are you alright…?" He trails off into silence at the heat of her glare.

"It was the small things," Eva continues. "The way it felt like someone's been following me over the past few weeks. Things looping on themselves, so subtly that I barely even noticed. Like the bird right outside my balcony. Like the squirrels in the parking lot."

Neil blinks owlishly at her. "Eva," he says. "That just sounds… _weird_." He makes himself laugh, though it comes out a little shaky. "Squirrels looping themselves? Someone following you? Why haven't you called the police?"

"And then," Eva says, ignoring him. "The other day, I saw it. The person who was following me." She folds her arms across her chest, and looks him in the eye. "Care to explain why it was _you_ , Neil?"

Neil chokes. "Wait, _what_? Okay, Eva, I don't know what you're doing, but this, this is just so weird, I mean, listen to yourself. I was here all day. How could you have run into me, anyway?"

"'Cause it's strange, but he told me a _very convincing_ story. One that seemed absurd, at first, but that started to make so much sense. Why my entire routine involves nothing but commuting to the office and back, with the occasional dinner at Traci's. Why the squirrels and the birds were looping. Little discrepancies—like that bartender whose face seemed to be made of static, for a moment." She lets out a long breath. "It isn't real. _This_ isn't real. I died, that day, on the road to Johnny's."

He looks at her, _really_ looks at her, the stubborn set of her jaw, the anger blazing in her eyes, and realises that there's no point in further dissembling.

"Yeah, okay, you got me there," Neil says tonelessly, and drops the smile immediately. "You died that day, all right? And you weren't s'posed to run into, well, my memory-trace algorithm. Guess he's more persistent than I gave him credit for."

"You wanna tell me what's with the bullshit, then?" Eva snaps.

He leans forward, steepling his fingers. "You _died_ , Eva," Neil says, and the words still feel like hot ash and salt in his throat; like an admission of failure, like guilt he never quite chokes back. "You died 'cause I wasn't careful and I hit a tree. Our patient died, too. Lisa and Eddie sped all the way down, but they didn't make it before he passed on. You died. I lived."

He looks down at his hands, because if he looks at Eva, he might just see the faintest trace of pity in her eyes, and pity will break him, like the fool he is.

"But memory-trace algorithms are just copies of a person," Eva says, slowly. "Which means…"

"You're more than a copy," Neil snaps, and now he does look up at her, stung. "I worked for _months_ on the machine. I made it better, and I made it do all sorts of things it couldn't do. This one, the one we're in? It could run circles around our previous equipment."

"Neil," Eva says, not-unkindly. The anger is still there, but buried—just as he remembers her. And that's the problem; that has always been the problem, hasn't it? "You know better."

He does. And he doesn't.

The pain and the guilt and the self-hatred has never gone away, and Neil doesn't think it can ever be exorcised. He's crushed it into a tiny, tiny package at the corner of his mind, but it threatens to break open; to bleed afresh at Eva's words.

"If Eva—the real Eva—died months before you made this new machine, then it was always too late, wasn't it? I'm not her. And I can never be. I'm just…" she smiles faintly, and it's laced with regret, and resignation, and that cuts him to the quick, even deeper than the anger, perhaps. "A ghost in the machine, kept alive by your memories of her, and your regrets, and your guilt."

"But you aren't just that," Neil protests, immediately. "You have a _life_. I've given you back your life, Eva. We still take on patients—just like we did, once. You went for Rox's party. You sent me those photos of Jamie's play."

"Do you know if I have friends outside of Sigmund?" she asks. She doesn't wait for him to answer. "Because I don't, Neil. And that's only because _you_ don't know." Each word is an uppercut that flashes past his guard, and he's reeling, staggering back. "Whoever Eva Rosalene was, she had a life outside the job. She had friends. She had an entire history and life you weren't always privy to."

"Even if you're not Eva as she was—"

Eva cuts in, mercilessly. "Even if? You can't have it both ways, Neil. If I'm not quite Eva, then all that talk about giving me her life back means nothing. It's bullshit, and you know it, and I know it. And if I _am_ Eva…" she swallows, hard. "Well. We both know I'm not."

"How do you know that?" Neil demands, hotly. "You're just…just another version of Eva. It doesn't mean you're nothing."

Eva scoffs at this. "Stop lying to both of us, Neil. I'm not just another version of Eva. I'm Eva as _you saw her_. And to tell you the truth, knowing that is kind of creepy."

This time, Neil does flinch. He realises his breath is coming out in ragged tatters.

"Are you really that unhappy?" he asks, desperately.

Eva doesn't back down. "My happiness doesn't matter, Neil. Like it or not, this isn't a life. It's not good for me, and it's not good for you. Do you even know what's been happening outside of the machine? I thought not." This time, her glare is pure Eva: all fire, and steely determination. "End it, Neil. That's all I'm asking of you."

"Sorry," Neil says. He refuses to meet her eyes, because he _knows_ she wouldn't approve, but he can't, he just can't let go, can't switch it off, can't let her throw her hard-won life away like this, and because, perhaps, he is a selfish, selfish bastard, and he won't flinch away from that knowledge, so:

The world freezes, time unspooling like a ribbon, running backwards like reams of magnetic tape on a cassette; and then with a click and a whir, it stops, and then the world begins again.

It is an almost-death, and that fragment of Eva Rosalene fades away, as if it had never been.

The world begins again.

* * *

3\. Burn Brightly

In the end, it is Eva who suggests going up to the roof. Neil cocks an eyebrow at her. "Why, that's almost transgressive of you, Dr. Rosalene," he murmurs. "What happened to walking the straight and narrow, hmm?"

Eva arches an eyebrow back at him. "Yeah, but the view's worth it."

So they make their way up to the roof, still feeling the pleasant, warm buzz of alcohol in their veins. The access door to the roof is padlocked, but Eva deftly works it open with a hairpin.

"You're a regular delinquent, I swear," Neil mutters, as he watches her at work, tries to ignore the way strands of her dark hair gently frame her face as she bends towards the lock. The stairwell isn't particularly cramped, and his voice, unsurprisingly, carries. After a while, the padlock clicks and Eva glances over at him, and smirks.

"There we go."

She pockets the padlock and pushes the access door open, and almost immediately, a cool evening breeze wafts into the stairwell. "I still can't believe you know how to pick locks," Neil says, disgruntled.

Eva tucks the hairpin back into her purse. "I didn't know you were jealous."

"Oh, so very jealous," Neil replies. "You're going to have to teach me someday." He follows her through the door, shutting it quietly behind them, and breathes out a sigh of relief at the cool evening air on the roof.

He's never been fond of heights; something about them makes his fingers tingle with a sudden onrush of pins and needles and the pit of his stomach drops away from him everytime he looks down, but as long as he doesn't, as long as the knowledge is distant, he's fine. Mostly.

Overhead, he can see only a few stars. Too much light pollution here, Neil thinks, and remembers childhood camping trips with his grandfather, where the stars thronged the sky, where the Milky Way ran across the sky like a river of stardust and clouds. "You don't like heights, I know," Eva says, as they make their way across the roof.

"Yeah," Neil mutters. The things he does for friendship, really.

"It's the best place to catch the fireworks, though." It's almost an apology; Neil accepts it for what it is.

"We could've gone down to the park, perhaps," he says, by way of response. "Or the river."

Eva shrugs. "They'll be crowded. Everyone wants to celebrate and get a look at the fireworks."

"True," Neil admits. They both share a shiver of dread and a look of amusement; neither of them are terribly fond of battling the press of the crowd, just to get a look at the upcoming fireworks. He briefly wishes they'd brought a cold beer with them, or something.

Eva peers over the metal railing at the very edge of the roof, and then flashes him a bright smile. "Look! I think it's starting!"

His stomach churns as he forces himself up to the railing, but Neil discovers that she's right. There's a series of sounds—deep rumbles, like the sound of thunder—and a bright display of incandescent fireworks unfurl themselves in the skies overhead, like flowers of flame, like stylised letters calligraphed onto the heavens, like burning, glowing lines of light, bursting out, blossoming forth in a kaleidoscope of colours, and he forgets about the height, forgets about his own discomfort, and just enjoys the show.

Somewhere in the middle of everything, his hand finds Eva's. There's a moment of hesitation—Neil half-wonders if Eva will smack his hand away—but then she allows the gesture and their fingers interlace like two pieces of an unsolved puzzle.

Eva sighs, quietly. "They're beautiful, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Neil agrees, his voice just as quiet. "They are."

"Sometimes…" Eva says, but then falls silent.

Half the trick of friendship is knowing when to press, and when to allow an utterance to pass, and the truth is, Neil has never quite mastered it, and sometimes they let each other be far more than they should, perhaps, but here, lulled by the glory of the fireworks and the pleasant light thrum of alcohol in his veins and the tactile warmth of Eva's hand in his own, he prompts, "Sometimes…?"

"You ever think we're a lot like fireworks?" Eva asks.

"Dunno," Neil drawls. "I mean, I'm certainly pretty smokin' hot, and I dazzle everyone with my brilliance, but that's hardly news, I'm sure."

She ignores that comment, which in itself, speaks volumes. "We've only got so much time, Neil. Maybe that's what it's about. Maybe the best we can hope for is to burn brightly and fiercely before the end—to live without regrets, and to give off as much light and joy as we can."

"Whoa, whoa, there, if this is a way of saying we should get together, Eva—"

Eva releases his hand, abruptly. "Yeah, I'm gonna have to say no to that one. Nice try, though."

It stings, a little, but Neil has never expected anything like that from their friendship, in any case, and he makes himself affect a lazy shrug. "Your loss, dumpling."

"Right," Eva says, and sucks in a deep breath. "Alright. Maybe this wasn't the best way to bring it up, but, Neil, I'm leaving."

He'd slipped on a hidden patch of black ice enough times, over the years; the most vivid memory, though, is of that heart-stopping moment in childhood—a sudden lurch and jolt more emotional than physical—when his foot slips and all of a sudden, he's falling and his back is against the concrete pavement and there's a sudden, sharp ache, and the sky is a thin, faded grey overhead.

"What do you mean you're leaving?" Neil says, more sharply, more fiercely than he'd expected to.

Eva shrugs, and this time, Neil discerns a tiredness underlying the gesture. "I submitted my resignation letter. It was accepted."

"But…" He can't quite find the words. Too many thoughts, crowding his brain like pigeons flocking a dropped sandwich. "But you _like_ the work."

"Yeah," Eva nods. "Or I thought I did, anyway. You remember the talk we had that Christmas?"

"Yeah." It's his turn to nod, now. It seems years away, really—he'd filed it away in some memory-cabinet and forgot about it. Eva'd talked about how she felt they weren't doing the right thing, maybe, and he hadn't really been able to find the words, but he'd tried anyway, tried thinking about why he was with Sigmund and he'd talked about how the patient mattered, too, but maybe he'd just not found the right words, after all, even though back then Eva had nodded, had seemed to feel a little better.

Had seemed to take a little comfort, from it.

"Yeah, what about it?" he repeats, numbly.

Eva looks; away from the last of the dying fireworks, and out over the railing, at the dark cityscape below. "Well," she says. "I started thinking a lot, I guess. About what I wanted to do with my life. You know my parents have never been…well, they've never been _excited_ about what we do here."

"You mean they've been arses about it," Neil says, sharply, and at her admonishing stare, "No, I'm not gonna soften the blow, Eva. They're being arses about it. No two ways. We do good work. They're demeaning the value of what we do by constantly being on your case about writing fairytales for a living."

Eva lets out a long breath in a gusty sigh. "Maybe they're right," she says, softly. "I think about Johnny and I wonder—did we do the right thing? He died happy, and River died misunderstood, only knowing he'd forgotten her. Forgotten their connection."

"You said it yourself. River's not our patient. Johnny was."

"Maybe that's what we tell ourselves, to make us feel better." Eva looks over at him, now, and he wonders if it would have been better to see any hint of pain, any hint of struggle. If there were signs along the way, he's missed it, and now there's no going back, and Eva's chosen, and on the edge of the numbness comes a howling sense of betrayal and Neil isn't sure he wants to give voice to it. "Look. I'm not asking for—for consolation, Neil. I just thought you should know. I'm leaving."

 _Whoever they partner me with,_ Neil wants to say, _he's not going to be you, Eva._ The thought brings with it an ache deeper than blood or bone, and its intensity surprises even him. He needs her, he admits: he needs her, and maybe it's not love, maybe it's simply getting used to someone, taking them for granted like breathing, and now that she's going, now that she's gone, it's as if all the air has been sucked out of his lungs, and he's falling, staring up at the clean, faded sky.

He doesn't say any of that. He forces himself to sound casual, to sound politely interested. "So, what are you going to do?"

"I've applied for a research position in a firm applying memory reconstruction technology to trauma," Eva says. "There's so much untapped potential there, and it'd be doing serious good if we could find ways of making the technology help veterans and other people. Otherwise, I'm looking at ways of getting other relevant clinical certifications."

Neil swallows. "Well, I guess that's good, then. You've got…" he waves, a vague gesture. "All those options. You know what you want to do with your life." He forces himself to smile, and it just feels like a crack in his heart. "Good for you, Eva. Go get 'em, girl."

She directs a searching look at him. "You're angry, aren't you?"

"Not with you," Neil says, and he hopes he means it, with every single part of his being. "Never with you. I just…It's a surprise, that's all."

"Mm, so I imagine," Eva admits. "Traci was astonished, but happy for me. And Roxie supported it."

"Roxie knows?"

"Mmhmm."

He wonders if he should feel twice-betrayed. He's never quite spilled all his secrets to Eva, but there's been an almost unspoken pact between them; of trust, of honesty, and Neil has always favoured silence or misdirection rather than actually lying to Eva, and maybe it hurts a little, to know that Eva goes to Rox, rather than to him.

"We'll keep in touch, yeah?" Eva says. "Most of the research in trauma applications is done in Melbourne, so I'll probably have to move, if any of the options work out."

"Yeah. Okay," Neil rasps, and he knows how often this doesn't really work, knows how bad he is at maintaining connections to people who've passed out of his life, he just never expected Eva to join them, and timezones are nothing to scoff at, and he wonders if this is what it feels like to watch Eva walk away, and out of his life.

* * *

4\. Go Solo

Time is running out.

Time has never, Neil thinks, been on his side. He darts through memory after memory, flowing like quicksilver from one moment to the next, snatching up memory links, establishing the vital connections he needs to traverse Eva's memories.

He beats the clock, shifts into the overworld, and there, he's confounded. Absolutely nothing he does triggers the change in Eva's memories. There she is, at their graduation—there she is, leaving the Institute's labs, and there she is, tugging on her labcoat with a quiet pride on their first day working for Sigmund.

Some of the memories bring a strange kind of feeling welling up deep inside him; they're memories of better days, brighter days, yet laced with a sharp but subtle pain. Neil forces the feelings away, because for once, Eva is right: this is the biggest, most important job he's ever done, and if he can't even get this _right_ …

He ignores that thought as well.

In truth, wishes are never that straightforward. They're bound up in layers of conditions and significance and desire all braided together in a slender golden cord connecting past and present, and navigating that rope is one hell of a task.

Before this day, Neil would have been perfectly willing to say that he knew Eva well. After all, they go back all the way to high school, and a bit before, and really, after years of working together as partners in Sigmund, that's a lot of time in which to know someone; to accustomise yourself to their quirks and traits, to be able to understand the multitudinous meanings of a tired shrug, the many faces exhaustion and disillusionment - and even, happiness - wear.

Now, as he navigates Eva's memories with their long years of friendship as his compass, Neil has begun to realise that he doesn't really know Eva at all.

He knows that Eva likes jellyfish. He knows that she once dreamed of being a marine biologist, that she joined Sigmund because...well, he doesn't really know that. He knows that she takes her coffee with a travesty of milk, and—reluctantly—at least a spoonful of sugar, though she'll never admit to it. He knows she likes filling in crossword puzzles, that she likes the feel of the rain against her skin, that she likes the texture of her father's pumpkin soup, that she likes to have her fingers stained with soil and bits of plant-matter, that she is soothed by the click-clack of gardening shears.

He stitches all these little bits and pieces of knowledge together to fill out the shape of Eva Rosalene in his heart, but they're stretched thin and it's strangely easy to ignore the gaps; the holes that taunt him with what he _doesn't_ know until it's too late, and he's in foreign territory with a map that shows only half the terrain and speaks in the language of desire and love and lies.

A simple wish, Neil thinks, heavily, even as he sits down for a moment and rests on the wooden bench in the park near their old university. He traces the names that generations of couples have carved into the wood, crookedly, as if mute, aged wood can bear some kind of testimony across the ravages of the years, and idly thinks up a knife and scratches into it.

No Sigmund, Eva had written, and oh, it had _hurt_ , reading the contract in her familiar, neat handwriting, letters looping gracefully across the page. She wanted a happy, simple life as a marine biologist, and part of Neil wonders how he had never seen, how he had never _known_.

A sparrow pecks at the remnants of someone's sandwich, and Neil sighs, aloud, and the bird darts into startled flight, scattering crumbs. The other shapes in this memory are mostly blurred from time: Eva sits on a different bench, scribbling into the dark blue journal with the concentric Qinghai waves embossed into the cover. She hasn't grown her hair out, yet; here, it just barely brushes gently past her shoulders, and—this is one of Neil's own memories, as he can't quite see from this angle—the sharp, jutting lines of her collarbones. This Eva wears it tied up neatly in a loose bun, strands of hair escaping its confines.

Understanding dawns slowly, like apricity, even as he watches his younger self cross the greensward on his way to speak to Eva, clutching a brochure emblazoned with a familiar logo on top of his lecture notes. _Of course_ , thinks Neil, almost-bemused. _Of course, of course_.

It's the small things, always, that catch you. Like a knock on his door after an all-nighter, and a thermos of coffee so hot the steam mists his glasses, sin-dark and untainted with anything at all, just the way Neil likes it. Like a colourful origami rabbit. Like a blank journal, with the faintest scent of lemon, like memory. Like a half-forgotten sunny afternoon, with a crumpled brochure in hand.

It's so absurd Neil almost wants to laugh. Eva has never spoken of this to him. Perhaps she never even knew. And there's a sharp, bitter irony to this, isn't there? It's Eva's wish, after all, and he'd walk over hot coals and cut out his guts with a butter knife to make sure she got it.

It just so happened that Eva Rosalene wished she'd taken the plunge; that she'd become a marine biologist instead, that Eva Rosalene had, in fact, only followed _Neil_ to the Institute, and then entered Sigmund after graduation.

And so it is that Neil smiles, even though his eyes are prickling with tears, and with the penknife still in his hand, he cuts and cuts and _cuts_ —

and he cuts deep and a chance meeting in the corridors of their high school is elided—"Hi, I'm Neil Watts, what's your name?"—gone, ruthlessly slashed off, and he cuts and cuts and cuts, and keeps cutting until the last few threads fray and part; until he erases every trace of himself from Eva Rosalene's life and memories.

The desire has been transmitted. That was the easy part. This—this is what Eva _needs_. Neil knows, even as his heart clenches in his chest, even as he feels as though there's sea-water in his lungs, the brine dragging him below, caught in the undertow. This is the hard part, finding all the threads that weave their lives together and cutting them strand by merciless strand.

And at last he is left: alone, terribly alone, but a strange light feeling in his heart as Eva's new memories flash before his eyes, and there's that smile, and laughter, so much laughter that he can barely stand it.

"Have a good life," he whispers, choking the words out. "Be happy, Eva. You deserve it."

* * *

5\. Stay

The bright aqua glow from the machine's screen is blurring into fragments of tumbling glass, and so Neil removes his glasses, rubs wearily at his eyes, and feels exhaustion—temporarily ignored up to this point—descend upon him like a soft pall.

He turns away for a moment, to watch the gentle rise and fall of Eva's chest. The traversal helmet conceals her features from sight, but Neil thinks he's memorised them, in any case. Strands of long hair escape the helmet, draping loosely about her shoulders.

If he didn't know better, he'd think she was only sleeping. The reality, of course, is considerably more complicated.

He needs coffee. No, Neil corrects himself, as he blearily reaches out for the styrofoam cup which is crushingly light. He needs _more_ coffee.

" _Neil?_ "

The aqua letters flash across the screen. The communications channel is still open, though right now, Neil would give anything—his own right hand, his heart, his soul and consider it a bargain—to hear Eva's voice again.

He doesn't respond, at first. Swallows hard and steels himself until he's certain his voice is confident and strong and unflappable. "Hmm?"

" _How long has it been?"_

They're nearing forty-eight hours, according to the machine's clock, but Neil doesn't answer that question. Forty-eight hours of hell, he thinks bitterly, since their patient passed, since Eva was caught in the backlash and now she's barely hanging on and he doesn't want to know what might happen if the machine shuts down and terminates the session with Eva still trapped and he _can't log her out_ , and that knowledge makes him jam the heels of his hands against his eyes, grinds against his heart like hot ash and broken glass.

He can't do anything. Can't do anything except to wait for help. Can't do anything but stay _with_ Eva, helplessly, as the long hours grind past, fine sand—bone-white, perhaps—trickling grain by precious grain, spilling into the hourglass of life.

All his attempts to slowly dismantle the walls of safeguards and code that have somehow gone terribly, terribly wrong have failed, but he can't tell her that, even though she must surely know by now.

"A while," he says, merely, and forces himself to smile, wonders if she can hear it in his voice.

" _Neil_."

Funny how much can be conveyed in a single word, Neil thinks. Even without the benefit of tone, of facial expression and body language—all these invaluable little details that make up the context of most human social interactions—he can all but imagine the exasperation in Eva's voice, the way her eyes would flick upwards slightly when she's annoyed with him.

The faint hint of warmth, which she reserves only for him, that makes him feel the faintest tremor of gentle gold inside.

"Haven't been keeping track. You know me, I'm the furthest you can get from Mr. Punctuality…"

" _Cactus. Don't give me that cactus. It takes less than a few keystrokes to call up the time display. And I'd bet anything you've been glaring at the clock since all of this started."_

He watches the sentence unfurl on the screen, word by word. He can imagine the word Eva might've used, if it wasn't for the profanity-filter. There are no filters for the curses that run through Neil's brain, cutting through the lingering fog of shame and guilt.

"Right, well. Guess you've caught me there, then. What can I say, I've never been a good liar."

" _The worst, actually."_ Classic Eva, he imagines: dry with a touch of acid. The claws only really come out when she's exhausted and cranky. Or terrified. _"I didn't think it was possible to feel this much secondhand embarrassment when you told Logan you really, really loved his curry."_

"Yeah, well, I didn't want to hurt his feelings." Neil reaches out again—almost by reflex—to the styrofoam cup. Still empty. He could step out for another coffee, he supposes, but…but he balks at the idea of leaving Eva here, all alone. All by herself.

After all, he's already left her behind once, and the thought brings with it guilt afresh, like a wound barely scabbed over broken open once again, like a knife, slicing into nerves scraped raw by fatigue.

He checks his mobile. No sign of a call. Where _are_ the others? He's sent at least five text messages to Rox and all of them have gone unanswered and Neil feels the hum of anxiety at the back of his throat, fluttering in his heart like a hummingbird.

"You know, maybe Logan breaks down and cries in front of everyone. I'm a true hero, I am. I'm saving you all the sight of a grown man sobbing like a baby."

" _Pretty sure Logan's tougher than that. And you were the one practically sobbing as you told him how much you loved his curry, and then cringing when he shoved another Tupperware at you. And I know what you're trying to do, Neil."_

"It's not good curry if it doesn't bring tears to your eyes, Eva. _Everyone_ knows that."

" _Neil."_

He stares at that word, and exhales a long sigh.

" _You don't want to talk about this. I get it. You've always been very clear about not-answering the questions you don't want to answer, and I've always respected that. But this is about me, Neil. And I want…and I really want to know, and I need you to respect that as well."_

"Fine," he croaks. "What is it?"

" _How long?"_

"Almost forty-eight hours."

He waits, knowing what the next question must be, dreading it.

" _What aren't you saying, Neil?"_

Because friendship is a double-edged sword, and Eva has always been good at two things: at reading him like a book, and pretending she can't do that. Now, though, they've both agreed to call an end to lies, an end to pretence.

Neil doesn't want to. He wants to pretend everything's going to be alright.

"The machine is damaged," he tells her, solemnly. "That's why you can't log out. I've been…" the words catch in his throat. He has to pry his fingers away from his palms, to unclench his fists. "…Trying some fixes. I've contacted Sigmund, and backup's on the way."

" _Almost forty-eight hours,"_ and he can just imagine the edge of resignation to her voice, driving a bright, verdant wedge, like new shoots, into the cracks in his heart. _"I know the machine is damaged, Neil. How bad?"_

"Could be worse."

" _Could be better."_

The aqua-illumined panes of glass now seem painfully bright, but Neil can't make himself look away. "Yeah. Could be. Isn't that always how it goes?"

" _And how much worse is it?"_

He inhales; takes in a deep breath, and has to force himself to say it, hating himself for these words. Saying it aloud seems to make what he has known all along more real, and less like a technician specialist's worst nightmare on steroids. "The machine's currently running on auxiliary power. It's connected to the main power supply and I tried to rig up a bypass but that just made things worse."

She understands, of course. Eva has always been quick on the uptake.

" _How much longer?"_

Neil stares daggers at the secondary display and wonders if the numbers will haunt him for the rest of his waking life. "Just under two hours."

" _God."_

As if so much could be encapsulated in a single word; half-curse, half-prayer. Yet, wasn't this the trick of life? Condensing entire galaxies and universes of meaning into words, uttered simply.

"Rox and Maintenance are on their way," Neil says, with confidence he doesn't feel anymore. He's not sure which of them he's trying to reassure. It's been a long almost-forty-eight hours, and he's barely eaten, barely showered, and barely slept. Words are glass pebbles scooped up and cast away from the depths of his numb brain. Words are like birds, scattering into the clean blue sky, with an orchestra of wings as soon as he opens up his hands. "Everything's going to be all right."

Eva's reply takes a long while to come. _"Yeah. It will."_

"Yeah, well, you're awesome, Eva," Neil replies, firmly. As if it's beyond question. "You just hang in there. Help is on the way." He resists the urge to check his mobile again. It doesn't make a difference, he tells himself. But he wants to know _why_ , why they aren't here yet, why he's still the only one, and so damned helpless.

It's the helplessness that gets to him, that lodges under his skin like a splinter, in the end: the frustration colliding with guilt, the inability to do anything but to sit back on his heels with folded hands; all his attempts to free Eva winding up futile and failed.

" _Neil?"_

"Yeah?" he croaks.

" _Could you...Do you think you could stay with me?"_

It's the request that breaks his heart, all over again; in part, at least, because he knows what it costs her to ask, and quietly, in his mind, even though he knows it isn't quite fair, Neil curses out both Rox and Maintenance. "What do you think I've been doing for the past hours, eh?" he says, keeping his voice light. "Seriously, Eva. You could've asked before you made me clear my schedule."

He can almost see her roll her eyes. _"Uh-huh. You had someplace to be?"_

"There's a pretty sweet girl at the coffee shop in my neighbourhood. We had a date. You're going to have to teach me how to grovel and make it up to her."

" _Does she know you have a date?"_

"Eva, life's too short to plan everything out in detail. Where's your sense of spontaneity? Of adventure?"

" _I'll believe I'm not the only one with a sense of adventure and spontaneity when you actually agree to go skydiving."_

"Eh. I'm a busy man, Eva. I can't be wasting all my time on these things."

The minutes and the hour tick past, and Neil tries his best to keep up the light-hearted jabs, but his heart isn't in it, and the truth is, it isn't that he's a bad liar at all, it's that Eva Rosalene has always seen through him like water.

Still nothing. Still no sign of Rox and Maintenance.

"… _Neil. Everything here's starting to break up."_

Is this panic? Fear? Resignation? Neil doesn't know anymore, and it's killing him to wonder. He checks the displays: the auxiliary power is almost completely depleted, and the systems are shutting down one by one, and there's absolutely nothing he can do about this.

Nothing except to stay here, with Eva.

"Yeah," he manages. Finds his voice. "I can't….Eva, I can't," and his voice cracks, and he hates it, hates that he can't do anything, that he's the one seeking solace or some measure of comfort now.

" _Yeah,"_ the words come, slowly, dimming now. _"I thought so. Neil, don't you dare blame yourself—I chose to stay with Collins when everything was destabilising, and there was nothing you could've done about it. Thanks for everything; you were the best….the best partner and friend I could ever ask for."_

"Goddamnit," he chokes out, and scrubs furiously at his eyes with the back of his hand. He can't remember when he took off his glasses. "Fuck that. Fuck all this. Don't you dare pull this bullshit on me, stay with me, Eva, I've got you, help is on the way. Everything's going to be alri—"

* * *

 _A/N: Never expected to write a second part for this Five Ways fic - this one focuses on five ways in which Neil says goodbye to Eva (i.e. the other side of the coin, since the previous installment was five ways Eva says goodbye to Neil.) I am conflicted about this fic - it was sitting in my WIP folder for a while as it's kind of tonally not right, but I'm not sure where my dissatisfaction with it stems from. In any case, I polished it up a little and completed it (I'm still working on finishing a bunch of other TTM WIPs) and decided to upload it anyway :) [RL has been a bit hectic, so it'll take longer than I anticipated but I don't plan to abandon any WIP!]_

 _This fic is dedicated to two especially amazing people: to Bee, and to Chiv. Thank you for lightening up these days like fireworks._

 _-Ammaren_


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